Press Release for Wednesday, September 12, 2012

U.S. News and World Report Names UNF Best Regional College

For the second consecutive year, the U.S. News & World Report has named the University of North Florida a “Best Regional” university in its 2013 edition of “Best Colleges,” which includes rankings and data of more than 1,600 schools nationwide.

UNF rose to No. 41 this year over last year’s ranking of No. 48. The 2013 edition of the “Best Colleges” guidebook is available at usnews.com and will be on newsstands Tuesday, Sept. 18.

“The University has become a destination school that serves its students and the region at a level of national distinction,” said UNF President John Delaney. “We can certainly point to the national recognition we have received this past year and our leadership role in the state as evidence of our accomplishments.”

This latest recognition comes on the heels of UNF receiving 15 other national designations, including Kiplinger’s Personal Finance’s List of 100 Best Values in Public Colleges for 2011-12; No. 19 Best Buy College, Best College in America (2012 and 2011) and Best College in the South, all by Forbes Magazine; 2012 Best Value Public College, Best College in the Southeast (2012 and 2013), 2012 President’s Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll, 2011 Best Value Public College and a top “Green” College by Princeton Review in 2011 and 2012; Best Regional University by U.S. News & World Report, Military Friendly School and among the100 “Coolest Schools” by Sierra magazine.

The institutions selected as U.S. News & World Report’s “Best Regional” university provide a full range of undergraduate majors and master’s programs and offers various doctoral programs. The 625 universities in this category aren’t ranked nationally but rather against their peer group in one of four geographic regions—North, South, Midwest and West.

“As choosing the right school becomes more complicated and costly each year, U.S. News strives to provide students and families with the best information and tools to help guide them through the college process,” said U.S. News & World Report Editor Brian Kelly.

The 2013 “Best Colleges” rankings feature the established rankings of the Best National Universities and Best National Liberal Arts Colleges, while also including the Best Regional Universities, Best Value Schools, Up-and-Coming Schools, among many others.

The U.S. Newsranking system uses quantitative measures that education experts have proposed as reliable indicators of academic quality, and it’s based on researched views of what matters in education. First, schools are categorized by their mission, which is derived from the breakdown of types of higher education institutions as refined by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching in 2010. The Carnegie classification has been the basis of the Best Colleges ranking category system since the first ranking was published in 1983, given that it is used extensively as the basis for classifying schools by higher education researchers.

Next, U.S. News gathers data from each collegeon up to 16 indicators of academic excellence. Each factor is assigned a weight that reflects the organization’s judgment about how much a measure matters. Finally, the colleges and universities in each category are ranked against their peers, based on their composite weighted score.

The U.S. News Media Group is a multi-platform publisher of news and analysis, which includes the digital-only U.S. News Weekly magazine. For more information about Best Colleges, visit www.usnews.com/colleges.